178 Chapter 7to induce a sincere turn from National Socialism. At one point Churchill
optimistically stated that “ ‘with a generation of self- sacrificing, toil and
education, something might be done with the German people.’ ” Stalin
wanted to make the Germans “pay” for the war and vehemently proposed
that the Allies should take draconian mea sures with them and “run them
into the ground” after the war had ended.^146 The American diplomatic notes
of Stalin’s comments and attitudes in Tehran were the following: “He ap-
peared to have no faith in the possibility of reform of the German people
and spoke bitterly of the attitude of the German workers in the war against
the Soviet Union.”^147 Stalin seemed to have been a strong believer in a primor-
dial national character. Alas, Lenin, Stalin, and many of the “Old Bolshe-
viks” came of age and developed some of their ethos within the framework
of a tsarist Rus sian worldview (despite being socialists), which leads me back
to “tsarist continuities.”
Stalin also played a decisive role in the drafting and content se lection
of the 1936 Soviet Constitution.^148 This constitution can be seen as a docu-
ment infused with a greater portion of Bolshevik ideology than with the
will to enforce the rights that it proclaimed. Conceptually, this constitution
provided a framework to protect Soviet private, public, and civic life. Yet,
from 1936 through 1938, the Soviet state could not guarantee its citizens
any individual, collective, or national rights if the NKVD was knocking at
Map 3. Central Asia. Note the locations of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and Tashkent, Uzbeki-
stan, where the majority of this study’s subjects were interviewed. Source: Map adapted from
About. com, country profile, Uzbekistan, map copyright, U.S. government, open source.